A blog dedicated to exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good interstate highways for that matter.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Movies In History: Hail Caesar!

You probably have to be a Coen Brothers fan, a history fan, and an old movie fan, to like this movie. Fortunately for me, I guess, I'm all three.

This latest Coen Brothers film takes a One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich approach to the story of protagonist Eddie Mannix, played by Josh Brolin. Taking place in a relatively short period of time in 1951, Mannix, whatever his theoretical role with a major motion picture studio, is a fixer. That is, he fixes problems that occur on the set, and those problems have to deal with the personalities he encounters.

In order to really grasp the film a person has to have a bit of a background in the times, arts, and i particular film. A series of films are being worked on in the studio, all of which are typical for the era. One of the films is purely a vehicle for background and a side plot, that being an Ester Williams type swimming extravaganza, but with the Williams stand in being a rough, street wise, and pregnant DeeAnna Moran, played very well by Scarlett Johansson with a brilliantly played and very funny cameo by Jonah Hill. The main movie feature involved in the plot is a Holy Land epic featuring a Baird Whitlock, played by George Clooney, who is kidnapped by Communist screenwriters. Other films and genre actors feature in that story, however, including a sailor featuring musical, a dramatic epic, a self affecting homosexual director, a communist song and dance man, a singing cowboy, a Latin dancer and so on. For those not familiar with movies of the 1940s and 1950s, many of these film snippets and characters will seem outlandish, but in reality, they are all actually extremely close to what actual films were like at the time and the characters, while parodies of Hollywood people at the time, aren't much different from what actual characters were like, except exaggerated.

Apparently the central character is based on a real Hollywood figure who had the role of a fixer. As played in this film, he's tortured by his role and is being worked to death, basically. Deeply religious, and facing an offer from Lockheed Industries to work elsewhere, like Ivan Denisovich his daily life is simply a struggle to get through.

Coen films tend to have hit and miss receptions by the movie going audience, and this one was apparently a bit of a miss. That doesn't surprise me much as a person has to be really familiar with film of the era it depicts in order to not think that everything is an outlandish exaggeration, when in fact the exaggeration is fairly slight. I really enjoyed the film, my wife really disliked it. I found it interesting that this is yet another Coen brothers film where religion plays a big part, and beyond the debate by a Rabbi, Orthodox Priest, Catholic Priest, and Protestant minister on the portrayal of Christ in the Biblical epic being filmed. The Mannix character is played as profoundly Catholic and taking refuge in prayer in his effort to decide his own future and (spoiler alert) making that decision in the Confessional.

Lex Anteinternet?

This blog has been around since 2009. In the very first post, we asked the question: "What the heck is this blog about?"

Our answer to the question was: "The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?"

We also noted: "Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book."

All of this is still true, but the focus of the blog has changed somewhat. It now focuses on the era from 1890 to 1920 in general, rather than on the law and lawyers specifically, although that may be far from obvious. It's also become the location where we comment on anything we feel moved to comment on.

We hope you'll feel moved to comment as well. While we moderate every comment, so as to weed out Spam, we greatly appreciate the comments where they are offered, and hope to see more.

Thank you for stopping in!

On This Day In Wyoming History

In addition to being the frequent blogger here, I'm also the author of On This Day In Wyoming History, a book cataloging the daily history of Wyoming. More on that book can be discovered by following the link.

I'm also the author of a number of articles that have been published by various journals, including The Wyoming Lawyer and Rural Heritage. Topics of my published articles range from legal and agricultural topics to historical topics.